title: Asymmetric partner pronoun use and demand-withdraw interaction in couples coping with health problems.
abstract: Recent research links first-person plural pronoun use (we-talk) by individual romantic partners to adaptive relationship functioning and individual health outcomes. To examine a possible boundary condition of adaptive we-talk in couples coping with health problems, we correlated asymmetric couple-level we/I-ratios (more we-talk relative to I-talk by the spouse than the patient) with a concurrent pattern of directional demand-withdraw (D-W) interaction in which the spouse demands change while the patient withdraws. Couples in which a partner who abused alcohol (n = 65), smoked cigarettes despite having heart or lung disease (n = 24), or had congestive heart failure (n = 58) discussed a health-related disagreement during a video-recorded interaction task. Transcripts of these conversations provided measures of pronoun use for each partner, and trained observers coded D-W patterns from the recordings. As expected, partner asymmetry in we/I-ratio scores predicted directional demand-withdraw, such that spouses who used more we-talk (relative to I-talk) than patients tended to assume the demand role in concurrent D-W interaction. Asymmetric I-talk rather than we-talk accounted for this association, and asymmetric you-talk contributed independently as well. In contrast to previous studies of we-talk by individual partners, the present results identify dyad-level pronoun patterns that clearly do not mark beneficent processes: asymmetric partner we/I-ratios and you-talk reflect problematic demand-withdraw interaction.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Arizona.
authors.forename: Kelly E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Rentscher
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Rohrbaugh
authors.forename: Varda
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Shoham
authors.forename: Matthias R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Mehl
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000523:psychology; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011578:Psycholinguistics / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D012907:Smoking / Q000523:psychology; D018454:Spouses / Q000523:psychology*; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult